Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

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Volume 7 Number 3, December 2006

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Thomas Traherne's "Thoughts" Poems and the Four Levels of Speech in Vedic Poetics

by

James J.  Balakier

University of South Dakota

  Among the topics recurring in criticism on Thomas Traherne (1637-74) since the discovery in 1903 of the first Traherne texts and their identification by Bertram Dobell have been interesting parallels between his consciousness-based philosophy and Asian thought. Similar to a fundamental notion in Oriental literature that the Self is he "Whose happiness is within, whose contentment is within, whose light is all within" (Bhagavad Gītā 5. 24), and that the "Contact with Brahman [totality] is infinite joy," (Bhagavad Gītā 6. 28), Traherne pointedly asserts in the Commentaries of Heaven manuscript (not discovered until 1982), "Heaven surely is a State and not a Place" (25). [i]  This premise underlies his whole presentation of Felicity, a state of a fully awakened, "boundless" mind in which "by Nature" you "Feel all illimited" ("The City" ll.  61-63).   Along with John Milton, Traherne represents a high point of Neo-Platonism in seventeenth century English poetry. However, while the transcendental element in Traherne's writings has been analyzed from a historically-based Neo-Platonic perspective by A.  L.  Clements, Carol Marks and others,[ii] compelling similarities between Traherne and Buddhism have been noted by R.  H.  Blyth and Daisetz T.  Suzuki in terms of a shared sense of original innocence and oneness, as well as an overall emphasis on direct experience. [iii]More recently in my own work I have examined the Traherne canon in the light of research on higher stages of human development galvanized by a widely taught, easily learned meditation technique preserved by the Vedic tradition in India that has been revived in recent years. [iv]   Of course, sacred eastern texts were not available in English translations until the late eighteenth century, so there can be the question of a paper trail linking Traherne to this tradition externally (The Bhagavad Gītā, for example, was first translated into English in 1785 by Sir Charles Wilkins).   Still, the Vedic tradition encompasses an impressive body of linguistic theory which will serve to elucidate the striking brand of cognitive experience given clear and lively expression by Traherne.

  Though not widely known in current theoretical circles, Vedic poetics is built upon a comprehensive paradigm of language that seems to integrate and encompass contemporary Western linguistics. Vedic literature models language in terms of four distinct levels of speech, which extend from the most concrete and finite form of speech to the most abstract or transcendental. These four levels of vāk, or speech, are vaikharī, madhyamā, pashyantī, and parā.  Vedic language theory "[posits] a correspondence between different levels of language and consciousness" (34), as the literary theorist William S.  Haney explains. "It conceives of the subject and object of knowledge as forming an integrated whole that cannot be separated without falsification or misrepresentation" (34). Vedic linguistics thus adopts an entirely different approach from Saussure, according to whose influential theory language is a system of differences in which "there is no natural bond between a sign and referent, or within a sign between a sound and a concept" (Haney 34). The first two levels of language identified by Rig-Veda are vaikharī or outward speech, and madhyamā, or pre-verbalized inward speech.  They actually correspond in Saussurean semiology to parole and langue, in that order. Both of these levels involve a gap between sound and meaning, between the knower and the known, though the second, madhyamā, or mental speech, has a less pronounced temporal sequence. At the third and fourth levels in Vedic language theory, on the other hand, sound and meaning, the perceiver and the word perceived, are deeply integrated. Pashyantī [v] represents a level of apprehension that is non-sequential:"[.  .  . ] there is no sense of time and no sense of a subject" (Malekin and Yarrow 45). [vi] It is the area in which a thought takes form deep in the psyche--the point at which pure consciousness gives rises to a thought but, like a ripple in water, is still inseparable from it. That such a region of the mind underlies conscious thought is hardly a radical idea, for it is a common experience that thoughts seem to come from somewhere below surface consciousness, only to burst into awareness. This is commonly referred to as the "Eureka" experience that especially creative people, such as artists and research scientists, have reported in relating how some grand design or solution popped into their heads, as if from nowhere. The meaning of a word, when this third level of language is clearly witnessed, is immediately and completely known. Haney notes that this level of language resembles that of phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl and later the Geneva School of critics (J.  Hillis Miller, Georges Poulet, and Jean Starobinski) who tried to fathom the essence of a writer's consciousness and language through its appearance in the critic's consciousness. Because at this level of direct intuition meaning transcends the dependency on phenomenalization, it cannot be analyzed into parts as an ordinary expression. But the notion of an absolute unity of sound and meaning here does not mean that the two are inseparable in the ordinary sense. That is, the meaning or transcendental signified of pashyantī differs from the notion of a transcendental signified in vaikharī and madhyamā. A transcendental signified in vaikharī and madhyamā involves a conceptual closure in the sense undermined by deconstruction:the bond between the signifier and the signified here forms a temporal stasis that excludes the unbounded possibility of the word's signifying potential. In the case of pashyantī, however, the transcendental signified is perceived not conceptually, but as a direct and open experience of unbounded wholeness. (35) 

Haney goes on to explain that parā vāk, "the highest level of language, consists of the same unity of sound and meaning found in pashyantī, but without the tendency toward expression. "An analogy will help here. If we picture the mind to be like an ocean, the bubbles breaking the surface of the water are analogous to vaikharī or spoken thoughts. The bubbles just visible below the waves correspond to madhyamā, or conscious but unverbalized thoughts. To continue the analogy, these two levels of speech exist in a fixed spatio-temporal framework, the relative world of wind and waves and change. But deeper down, where the rising bubbles of thought are not yet within sight of the surface, the boundaries of time and space are less rigidly defined. They have, in fact, totally dissolved at the deepest point, the sea bottom. It is here, where thoughts first take the form of bubbles, that the pashyantī level of language is present.  From the perspective of the sea's surface, these newly created bubbles do not appear to exist at all, though one may have an inkling that the surface bubbles must come from somewhere. Now, the seabed itself, which is beyond any movement, and which stretches absolutely everywhere, is the parā level, where all possible bubbles of thought are potential but not yet manifest.      

The quality and scope of Traherne's familiarity with the third and fourth levels of language, pashyantī and parā, is evidentespecially in the "Thoughts" poems in the Dobell sequence, a unified set of thirty-seven poems on the theme of Felicity[vii] contained in a manuscript named in honor of Bertram Dobell, who first published it in 1903 in a modernized edition. [viii]This folio contains original versions of the poems, unlike the so-called Burney manuscript, titled Poems of Felicity, which was injudiciously edited by his brother Philip Traherne in preparation for a posthumous edition which went unpublished. Traherne establishes the existence of the experience that is the basis for Felicity in the first part of the series, which reaches a high point in "My Spirit. "The next part delves into the understanding of Felicity, and aims at plainly bringing out the truths that the experience of the pure nature of the mind teaches, as opposed to "Custom" or habitual socially derived practices ("Nature" 1-3). The final part, including the "Thoughts" poems, combines both experience with understanding in the name of complete knowledge. The experience of self-referral consciousness spills out in these poems, as it were, into the thought process ("Thoughts I-IV") and sensory experience ("Goodnesse"). 

 "My Spirit," Traherne's "most comprehensive poem" (Margoliouth II, 349), sets the stage for a discussion of how the Vedic paradigm of language applies to the "Thoughts" poems. Its subject is his beginning awareness of the ""Substance" and(4) "Capacitie" (8) of his mind in its "Naked Simple" (1) state. In highly elaborate, irregular stanzas he expressively catalogs its primary qualities from actual experience.  It is boundless, lacking any "Brims [or] Borders" (7), like a circle the circumference of which is everywhere. It is entirely self-powered and self-sustaining, for "It doth not by another Engine work,/ But by it self" (23-25). It is further characterized by profound happiness, for he perceived that "Her [Dame Nature's] Store/Was all at once within me; all her Treasures/Were my Immediat[e][1] and Internal Pleasures,/ Substantial Joys, which did inform my Mind" (39-42). It is, indeed, the source of thoughts themselves:  "The Thought that Springs/ Ther[e]from's it self"(10-11). It is, in other words, the point or plane from which all thoughts arise, and as such is full of energy and force, corresponding in some detail to the deeper levels of speech articulated by the Vedic paradigm. Traherne shows an awareness of a non-material, unchanging basis for thoughts and by extension for all of language, corresponding to parā vāk.   That these thoughts have inspired from him such a lively commentary conveys his sense of the existence of a pashyantī dimension to speech, which is a level of "flashlike understanding" (Coward 149). At this level, "there is no distinction between the word and the meaning and there is no temporal sequence. All such phenomenal differentiations drop away with the intuition of the pure meaning in itself. Yet there is present at this level a kind of 'going-out' or desire for expression" (Coward 129).   That Traherne actualizes it in the dynamically playful rhythms and expressive sounds of the poem suggests the natural impulse characteristic of speech on this third level to "go out" or find expression.  It also conveys something of the intoxicating reality the experience--in which "evry Object in my Soul a Thought/ Begot, or was" (45-46)--had for him.               

Traherne's realization of the inherent linguistic power of the mind, as revealed by "My Spirit," is extensively developed in his "Thoughts" poems--"Thoughts.  I-IV" along with "Ye Hidden Nectars," which occurs between the second and third "Thoughts" poems--and by the whole concept behind this set of verses. These poems appear later than"My Spirit," which is thirteenth in the Dobell sequence. "Thoughts I" is number 30;"Thoughts II" is 32; "Thoughts III is 34; and "Thoughts IV" is 36 and the penultimate poem in the unified sequence.  In these interrelated poems Traherne expresses the blissful, bubbling quality of thoughts at their subtlest, freshest stage of development.  

The theme of the transcendental origins of thoughts is introduced and developed in "Thoughts I" through an ecstatic though rational commentary in twelve-line long irregular stanzas. They are the "Engines of Felicitie" (5), the vehicles of overflowing happiness--a description which chimes with the expressive power of the pashyānti level of speech based on the inherent dynamism of parā.   That he is conscious of this sublime underlying phenomenon is underscored by his reference to thoughts as the source of "Transcendant [.  .  . ] Delight" (12).  In the second stanza he continues this idea by stating that they transcend time and space, for "By you" (the poet addresses his thoughts in the second person as if they were indeed alive) "I do the Joys possess/ Of Yesterday's-yet present Blessedness;/ As in a Mirror Clear,/ Old objects I Far distant do even now descrie" (13-17). They are, he jubilantly announces, the "Offsprings and Effects of Bliss" (21) that renew his "Glory. "  He adds in stanza 3 that "At any tine, / As if ye were in your Prime" (28-29), thoughts open up all heavenly treasures, all the joys "which Surround/ The Soul" (32-33). He concedes in stanza 4 that "I know not by what Secret Power/ Ye flourish so" (37-38). This reference to a mysterious power driving thoughts further supports the notion that Traherne is aware of the existence of parā vāk. The poet reaches a crescendo in stanza 5 with his declaration that "The Thought, or Joy Conceived is/ The inward Fabrick of my Standing Bliss/It is the Substance of my Mind/ Transformed, and with its Objects lind" (55-58).  Close analysis of these lines reveals that Traherne is describing here the most refined facets of cognition. The poet indicates that a thought experienced at its conception, right at the point where parā becomes pashyānti, is perceived to be the fabric or substance out of which happiness itself is made.   Stanzas 6 and 7 round off the poem by stressing the liberty of thoughts, in contrast to the eyes and limbs which are confined to the body (61-63).  They roam everywhere, "suck[ing] the Sweet from thence" (75), "Ánd are Immortal in their place" (82). 

The picture Traherne gives of the thoughts in this poem is that they originate in silence, however one that, like parā, is not vacant but filled with possibility for expression. As he affirms in a poem titled "Silence," "A quiet Silent Person may possess/ All that is Great or High in Blessedness. /The Inward Work is Supreme [.  .  . ]" (1-3). He adds that "A man, that seemeth Idle to the view/ Of others, may the Greatest Business do," (5-6) like Adam in his innocence before his fall, which alternatively was the result of "outward Busy Acts" (9). "Thoughts I," along these lines, is followed by a two stanza poem titled "Blisse" which tells the reader to follow the prelapsarian Adam's example and shun "new Invented Things," those "Ribbans" and "Rings," "Saddles [and] Crowns," which destroy true happiness (6-8). 

"Thoughts II" is also in twelve line stanzas, but patterned differently than the previous "Thoughts" poem: 

As the chart shows, the two stanza forms are essentially variations of each other, with "Thoughts I" having seven rhymes, perhaps suggesting greater complexity, while "Thoughts II" has only six. Metrically speaking, the stanza of "Thoughts I" has overall a total of merely three more feet than the latter poem. Of course the longer length of "Thoughts I," which is seven stanzas compared to the four stanzas of "Thoughts II," gives the former poem greater importance. 

Thematically "Thoughts II" expands upon the excellence of thoughts, which are the 'Quintessence" of nature (2), implying in Vedic terms that they emerge directly out of parā. Indeed, they are likened in stanza 1 to the delicate fruits and flowers of "Paradise," and soon fade if not cultivated. Why such precious things should be "So Apt to fade" is not, the poet concedes in stanza 2, an easy question to answer. But this only emphasizes the importance of their "Continual Care" (18). In stanza 3 he cites a biblical example to drive home the idea by pointing out that the psalmist David's "Temple," which is of the spirit, "did transcend" King Solomon's wood and stone building (25-26). He concludes in stanza 4 that this "Spiritual World within" is far dearer and nearer to God than "all his Glorious Dwelling Place," or the physical universe, because it "comprehend[s]/ Eternity, and Time, and Space. "Relating Traherne's insight to the Sanskrit linguistics, parā is the foremost level of nature and the mind. It is the non-material inner world which encompasses the entire spatio-temporal reality. But it is "A Living World" (44), as is to be inferred from its manifestation as the subtlest, most tender and nourishing thoughts, which are identified in the Vedic model with pashyānti. 

"Ye hidden Nectars," the following four stanza line poem, is written in a ten line irregular stanza form. Its purpose is not so much to advance intellectual understanding of Felicity as it is to joyously overflow at the insights that have already been made concerning the sweet power and life giving properties of the inmost thinking process. Obviously this does not apply to ordinary outwardly oriented thinking, but to the refined thoughts and sensations which "in the Dark [.  .  . ] are Paradice" (40). "Ye rich ideas which within me live" (15), Traherne exclaims. He goes on to exult in how they "replenish" (28) him, bringing "Even Heavn it self" down on earth (19-20).   

  Thoughts III and IV complement the previous "Thoughts" poems by presenting in the measured, orderly units of heroic couplets, which were to dominate Neo-classical poetry, a well reasoned view of the experience of the thought process which Traherne simulated in all of its rushing spontaneity through irregular stanzas in "Thoughts I" and "Thoughts II. "   The underlying idea in "Thoughts III" is that a thought "is the End of all when understood" (48), and is the spring of "Beauty, Order, Peace" (9) and indeed of all goodness (47). Reasonably, the poet observes that "the Soul without them [is] useless found" (16) even when they "seemeth weak, and next to Nought" (24).   Evoking conventional humanist moral imagery, he warns that "The Hony and the Stings/ Of all that is" are brought out by thoughts (22-23).  The beauty of order and balance of thought are certainly highlighted both thematically and stylistically by Traherne in "Thoughts III. "As he states in parallel fashion, a thought is "The very Best or Worst of Things it is, /The Basis of all Misery or Bliss" (59-60).   This is not to say that Traherne has absconded from his radical notions about the nature of thoughts, for he announces, rather outrageously, that a thought "is the only Being that doth live" and is "Capable of all Perfection" (54-55). Its "Measures and Capacities" are beyond "touch" or infinite (61-62). It may even "Omnipresent be" (75). With nuptial imagery likely to raise eyebrows, he declares near the end of the poem that a thought "shall be Married unto all:/ And all Embrace, tho now it seemeth Small" (73-74). 

  The last "Thoughts" poem, IV in the series, is headed by lines from the Psalms, quoted from memory by Traherne: "In thy Presence there is fullness of Joy, and at thy right hand there are Pleasures for ever more. " The leading metaphor of the poem is thus that thoughts are wings of the soul to eternal joys (1-4) which God uses to "compleat the Bliss" (27) and make "a Living [Temple] within the Mind" (88). Through thoughts the soul can range from earthly palaces to the New Jerusalem. They show us the manifold pleasures of the "Stable Earth" which are "far more precious then if made of Gold" (45-46), a favorite them of Traherne's. If we do but "rightly see" (36), then the omnipresent reality that we will find surrounding us will fill us with unthought of joy. 

  In the final lines of "Thoughts IV" Traherne prays that his "pure Soul" be "transformed to a Thought" that will "Spend all its Time in feeding on [God's] Love,' And never from thy Sacred presence mov[e]. /So shall my Conversation ever be / In Heaven" (96, 99-102).  As we have seen before, Traherne shows a familiarity with the parā level of speech, in which the mind is simply aware of itself--of its own unlimited nature aspure "thought" or consciousness. In a remarkable passage in Select Meditations, Traherne records in wonderful detail his direct experience of pure consciousness:

[W]ere nothing made but a Naked Soul, it would See nothing out of it Selfe. For Infinite Space would be seen within it.  And being all sight it would feel it selfe as it were running Parrallel with it.  And that truly in an Endless manner, because[e] it could not be conscious of any Limits: nor feel it Selfe Present in one Centre more then another. This is an Infinite Sweet Mystery: to them that have Tastedit.  (III.  27)

The "naked" mind, a mind fully awake to itself, is not subject to boundaries or any kind of smallness. It just "is," but consciously so, which brings with it a sense of fullness and completeness.  This is parā or "parame vyoman,"transcendental consciousness. It is, in the formula of Vedic literature, "Sat Chit Ānanda":"Sat" is the unchanging; "Chit" is consciousness or intelligence; "Ānanda" is the state of bliss. When consciousness experiences its own unchanging, timeless nature on the parā level, abundant bliss comes (Bonshek 292-93).   It flows out, through the agency of its own nature, at the least material level of the mind, corresponding to pashyānti in the Vedic model of speech.   "Desire," a poem occurring between "Thoughts III and IV, may be understood to approximate this tendency of the transcendent fullness to be expressed while remaining full in itself (Bonshek 197). In a thirteen line irregular stanzas form, Traherne praises the "Eager Thirst" with which he was born that could be satisfied with nothing less than paradise (1-13).   It was an "Ambassador of Bliss" that inclined him to treasure "real Joys" provided by "the sence/ Of Things" rather than "Objects" themselves (54-59). Similar to the impulse to "go out" in the Vedic conception of pashyānti, desire is for Traherne a force which is grounded in and impelled by the transcendent.

  Over the last thirty-five years, scientific research on a fourth state of consciousness[2]--in which the mind and indeed the entire metabolism is in a deeper state of rest than that of  deep sleep, yet at the same time more alert or aware than in the waking state--has authenticated the Vedic model of the mind as a multi-layered phenomenon extending from an outer concrete level to a completely abstract self-referral state. Consequently developmental psychologists have hypothesized that the mind is hierarchically structured in layers from concrete to abstract:the faculties of action and sensation, desire, thinking mind (associative faculty), intellect (discriminative faculty), feelings and intuition, and experiencing ego, respectively [. . . ].   [U]nderlying all these levels is the completely abstract level of 'pure consciousness' in which the knower, known, and process of knowing converge in one unified field of awareness freed of all content (e. g. , percepts, thoughts, and emotions). Stable identification of individual awareness with the field of pure consciousness is said to provide the foundation for development of the first higher stage of consciousness, termed 'cosmic consciousness. 'At this stage the knower can finally know himself directly without representational mediation.  This is because pure consciousness is held to be the essential nature of the 'Self'--a 'self-referral' field in which consciousness is fully awake to itself. (Alexander and Langer 21-22)

  The possibility exists, in conclusion,  that Traherne had intimate knowledge of the deeper levels of the mind conceptualized by the Vedic model of speech. This linguistic paradigm, though the formulation of an ancient culture which Traherne could not have known, appears to be well suited for gauging the depth and clarifying the value of his holistic sense of Felicity. Parallels in particular between his "Thoughts" poems and the mechanics of the thought process as comprehensively described by Vedic literature seem to support such a cross cultural approach. 

Notes

Works Cited

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